I Always Feel Like...
Somebody is watching me. On some Sunday mornings I clean my mothers 3 bedroom home across town. Sometimes I get there before she returns home from church and I look around at the some of the things that I have grown up with and notice all the new things that never were there before. There are groups of pill bottles and one of those daily pill boxes on the beautiful wooden dining room table that has an extra leaf for when there were many more of us to sit at it. There are stacks of old bills and papers on a guest room bed upstairs and there are bookshelves lined with self help and religious inspirational books as well as my fathers mystery novels that he used to carry around literally in his back pocket...
Which leads to the first lines of this entry. I feel like he is there, watching me as I dust and wipe and vacume, taking inventory of my diligence in getting into the corners where no one else would even bother to check. But then there is me - the detail oriented one - who is going to be sure to check those corners even if my own toilet at home is encrusted with pee and age, my mothers toilet will never be.
My father flitters around there, around my mother, around me...around some of those things that he loved - the salt and pepper shakers, the pictures of the family weddings, the push button phone that I am sure he used a few times at least...I hear him whisper through papers that have fallen out of shelves, papers with his name on them, bills that still come in his name. I see his distinctive handwriting and notice that my mother has taken the second chair out of the kitchen and put a fan on it in the sunroom. She is so sad there, alone.
She says things to me that make me want to write...to run...to be deaf. I think things that are selfish, unkind and remorseful. I then switch to her place and see the world out of the Windex wiped windows of her life and I breathe in patience, understanding, compassion...sometimes I can get a breath in deep enough to save me from the horrid path my mind wants to, and often does, take. Then my mind switches to blueberries, books and video games. These are the things that truly make me happy and I wonder, if at her age, will those things still appeal to me? Painting and writing most definitely will...you know I will want to leave a good bye letter...or two...and of course a painting that will channel my pain, anger, or frustration if that is what I am feeling. I would like to think that I can prevent alot of my future anguish via channeling creatively what I know how to do. I wish the same for her, and I tell her so all the time. Ultimately it is up to her to pick up what she needs to make her happy. I help her the only way I know how, and that is by sharing what my thoughts are and my experiences are, just as I am doing now with you. I hope it helps...I know it helps me :)
Thanks again for reading, and now to finish my "Blueberry" Parchment page, part of the new section of my work with pen and ink on parchment - "Fruits and Aromatherapy"...
Until Next Time
Namaste
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